Motherhood Meets Mastectomies

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Peep Shows

Thanksgiving weekend was full of family time, visits with friends and peep shows. I think I flashed someone every day of the long weekend. If any of these peeping Toms had had major surgery, I’d want to see some scars too. They were like intrigued students ready for their Thanksgiving science lesson. It seemed like the general reaction was surprised non-chalance, like, “oh wow… Yeah, I guess that’s not so bad. In fact, that’s pretty good.” At first the lack of nipple and the 8 inch scar across each boob is a bit of a shock, but then it quickly seems almost normal. When my best friend in Cali asked my husband for a description, he put it perfectly. “Ya know those paragraphs where the middle of every word is jumbled, but you can still read everything perfectly? It’s like that. You know there’s something missing, but you can glance right over it. A boob is a boob”. After the demonstration, the Q and A began. I realized that I haven’t really explained the whole process here. Since my surgery, I have had tissue expanders where my breast tissue once was. These expanders are sort of like beach balls. Every two weeks or so, I go back to my plastic surgeon’s office and he injects them with saline to pump them up to a volume and size that I’m comfortable with. Initially, since they still had room to be expanded and because there is very little between my skin and the expander itself, I could see the rippling under my skin. I could press it, feeling the plastic bubble and hearing its sloshing fluid inside. It was both disturbing and kind of hilarious. A fun party trick for my own party of one. Now that I’ve reached the size I like, my doctor knows the volume that my implant will be. Today, I got my first of two final over-fills. This will stretch my skin just a little bit more to make way for the implants. That is my next procedure: the implant swap. I will wait roughly eight weeks from final fill until I can swap these bowling balls out for some supple silicone gel implants. Those will hopefully feel and look more natural (not that I mind looking like Jewish Barbie for a while. Huge boobs, big ass, brown hair). My plastic surgeon will use the same scar that I already have to put the new implants in and once that heals, the nipple process begins. He will use some of that scar to manufacture the profile of a nipple (the turkey’s done part). I don’t want a lot of elevation there. I prefer not to high beam everyone all the time. We will see how that goes. After that, a nipple will be tattooed on to look like an areola. Finally, the icing on the cake is a little lipo. He told me today, to help pad around the implant and give a more natural slope and appearance to the breast, he just wanted to “plant the seed” that doing a little lipo would help with that. I’m like, “go ahead and plant that seed, I’m on board, lipo away!”. Apparently, that fat will also help with some of the side effects that I’ve experienced so far. Now that all of my natural insulation has been removed, I get a lot colder up top. And ya know that shivery feeling when your insides are warm and you drink something really cold? It feels like an icicle trickling down your esophagus? Every time I drink a beverage that’s colder than room temperature, I get that feeling. I can’t wait for summer!!! That feeling will be helpful (and so will the lipo).